Any Man Of Mine. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ completely, telling him about some ridiculous mix-up that had occurred in the cutting room that afternoon.

      It was sad that he and Misty hadn’t been able to have children, she had always thought. They would have made him less lonely. But she could see that he seemed to find solace in her company, and they had worlds of things in common, from a mutual love of ballet and the theater to classical music and art. She found in him a mentor as much as a friend, a tutor and a protector. Nicholas never made a pass at her himself and was fiercely protective. He scrutinized the few suitors she had over the years and gave her his advice, welcome or not, on the men she went out with. If she had to work late, he escorted her home himself. And when he felt that she was ready, he’d found her a job as an apprentice designer in one of New York’s grandest fashion houses. He’d encouraged her, pushed her, bullied and chided her, until she climbed straight to the top, which was quite a climb for the only child of a poor, widowed textile worker in the small Georgia town of Ashton. She didn’t like to remember her childhood at all. In fact, Nicholas was the only person she’d ever told about it. But then, Nicholas was like no one else. In a real sense he was the only true friend she’d ever had since she left Ashton. And shortly after she’d come to New York, she was relieved to know that Nicholas maintained an apartment in the city.

      The phone rang, and she barely heard it, so deeply was she immersed in memory. She was used to Mandy getting the phone, making coffee, serving meals, but this was Mandy’s day off, and it took her five rings to realize it. She dragged herself to the end table and picked up the receiver.

      “Hello?” she murmured, stifling a yawn.

      “That kind of day, was it?” came a deeply amused voice from the other end of the line. “Get on something pretty and I’ll treat you to dinner at The Palace.” She felt her spirits revive. “Oh, Nicholas, we haven’t gone there in months! And they make the most marvelous chocolate mousse.”

      “Can you make it in half an hour?” he asked impatiently. “I’ve got to catch the eleven o’clock plane to Paris, and we won’t have much time.”

      “Has anyone ever told you that people who don’t slow down get ulcers?” she asked, exasperated.

      “They would have to catch up with me first,” he told her. “Half an hour.”

      She stared at the dead receiver. “Nicholas is an enigma,” she muttered as she slipped into a long green velvet gown with a deep V neckline and a side slit. He was every inch the high-powered executive, and he had millions, but he wouldn’t delegate any responsibilities. If a deal had to be closed, he’d close it. If there was a labor relations problem at one of his plants, he’d negotiate it. If there was an innovative process being presented, he’d go to see it. He pushed himself relentlessly even now, a habit left over from those first horrible weeks after Misty’s death. He wouldn’t slow down; he wouldn’t take time off. It was as if he was afraid to stop, because if he did, he’d have to think and that wouldn’t please him. He had too much that he wanted to forget.

      Keena was dressed and waiting when the doorbell rang. She opened the door and mentally caught her breath at the sight of Nicholas in evening clothes, as she always did. With his dark hair and eyes, his bronzed complexion in that leonine face, his towering, wrestler’s physique, he was the stuff of which feminine dreams were made. And perhaps if Keena hadn’t been so wary of men, so unforgetting of that humiliating adolescent romance and the humiliating incident that had followed it, she might have fallen head over heels in love with him. But she’d seen Nicholas in action, and she knew the effect his dark charm had on women. She’d seen his occasional conquest swoon, fall, succumb and be heartlessly discarded too many times to risk joining that queue herself. Nicholas had found safety in numbers since Misty’s death, and he was apparently risking no emotional involvement by confining himself to one woman. Keena preferred the position of being just Nicholas’s friend and confidante. It was much safer than being added to the notches on his bedpost.

      His own eyes were busy, sliding up and down her body with his usual careless appraisal.

      “Delightful,” he said with a cool smile. “Shall we go?”

      “I’m starved,” she told him as they got into the empty elevator and Nicholas pressed the main floor button. “I feel as if I haven’t eaten for days.”

      “You look it, too,” he growled, eyeing her from his lounging position against the rail. “Why the hell don’t you give up that diet and put some meat on your bones?”

      “Look who’s talking!” She glared. “It would take a forklift to get you up a hill!”

      He moved toward her with a dark look in his eyes under that jutting brow. “Think it’s fat, do you?” he taunted. He caught her hands and dragged them to his shoulders. “Feel. Show me any flab.”

      It was like discovering fine wine where she had expected to taste water. She’d never noticed just how broad Nicholas’s chest and shoulders really were, or how the scent of tobacco and expensive cologne clung to him. She’d never noticed how chiseled his mouth was, or how exciting it could be to look into his dark eyes at close range. It had been safer not to notice. But her hands touched him through the smooth fabric of his evening jacket and lingered there when she felt the hard muscles under it.

      “Well?” he asked, a strange huskiness in his deep voice as he looked down at her.

      “You... I never realized how strong you were,” she stammered. She looked up into his eyes and time seemed to stand still for a space of seconds while they looked at each other, discovering facial features, textures, expressions, in an unfamiliar intimacy, in the quiet confines of the elevator.

      It took several seconds for them to realize that the elevator had stopped and the door had opened. Self-conscious and a little clumsy, Keena managed to get out a little ahead of him and lead the way to the front of the building where his white Rolls-Royce waited with Jimson at the wheel, staring straight ahead stoically.

      “Doesn’t Jimson ever get a day off?” she asked Nicholas when they were inside the car with the glass partition up, giving them total privacy.

      “Not lately. I’ve been working twenty-five-hour days,” he replied.

      “I’ll never get used to this car,” she sighed, leaning her dark head contentedly back against the leather as he was doing.

      “What’s wrong with it?” he asked curtly.

      “Nothing! It’s just that few people ever get to ride around in a Rolls—white, no less.” She laughed.

      He half turned in the seat, one big arm over the back of it, his eyes gleaming, though his smile had not completely disappeared. “And what’s wrong with that?” he asked with deliberate slowness.

      She braved his glittering eyes. Why did he look so suddenly predatory to her? So dark and menacing? “Nothing—except that I feel as if I were on display every time I ride in it. That’s all.”

      “You should be on display, Keena.” Something in the way he fairly growled her name sent a warm, unfamiliar tingle up her spine.

      “Because I’m rich and famous now, you mean, and everyone back in Ashton would hardly recognize this Keena Whitman?” She laughed shortly, her words underscored with a note of self-derision.

      Her answer hadn’t pleased him. It was in the hard lines of his face, the narrowing of his eyes. “No, not at all, though you needn’t take that little-Miss-Nobody-from-Ashton tone СКАЧАТЬ